Apple Music is second to Spotify when it comes to the amount of subscribers they have accumulated. They are a big competitor to Amazon Music Unlimited as they are still reasonably new to the streaming world, and they will both be fighting to top Spotify. I’ve created a SWOT analysis to make clear what aspects both companies have to their advantage and disadvantage.
Strengths.
Apple Music’s service costs the user £9.99 per month, and the platform is already installed onto each Apple product, to make it easily available to consumers. This makes the decision easy for customers that have already invested in any product in the Apple range. It’s already there at their finger tips for them to use. This is what Amazon Music Unlimited lacks in. Although they have the Echo, Apple has a huge audience for their streaming service through people that buy their products. A considerable amount compared to Amazon. However, Amazon are approaching this in a completely different way. Although Apple has ways to advertise to customers easily, they don’t offer any perks for these existing consumers. If you own an Apple product, you still have to pay the full amount for their streaming service. Amazon however, do offer perks to their existing customers. The different price points make a huge difference, as this shows loyalty to the people who use Amazon.
Apple Music has a huge library of 30 million songs which is a competitive amount. However Amazon Music Unlimited boasts 10 millions more. Therefore Apple will have to consider more if they want to stay competitive.
Social media is something that consumers enjoy when it comes to streaming services. Sharing playlists and music with their friends is another way of initially getting people on board. This also creates the feeling of missing out for people who don’t use the service. People don’t want to miss out on something social that their friends are doing. So this creates a domino effect. For every customer that uses the streaming service, theres a good chance all their friends are going to be using it too. This is a strength of Apple Music. The social media aspect is going to keep customers coming. Unfortunately, Amazon Music Unlimited doesn’t have this feature, so they will be relying on word of mouth to advertise their service.
Weaknesses.
Unlike Spotify, Apple Music does not offer an ad-run ‘freemium tier’. This free tier worked really well for Spotify to get people interested and used to the app. This is something Apple Music would benefit from as their service is quite costly. Although Apple Music Unlimited doesn’t offer this free tier either, they do offer cheaper rates with their other products, which makes it more affordable for the consumers.
Apple Music offers a 3 month free trial option, in which customers can try the platform for 3 months entirely for free, and them move onto the paid subscription. Although this seems like a strength compared to Amazon, as they don’t currently offer a free tier, it was reported in 2016 that they are experiencing a really high rate of cancellations after the free trial (McAlone, 2016).
Opportunities.
Apple already have a good relationship with social media companies, and this poses an opportunity for them to benefit their service. Apple Music could potentially have the opportunity to come together with other companies, and apps to add extra services to their platform. This opportunity has already started with their recent integration with ‘musical.ly’, the lip sync video app. They will be adding more music to the musical.ly app’s library, and in return musical.ly will be curating playlists for Apple Music (Malt, 2017). This is an opportunity Amazon Music Unlimited may find difficult to come by, because they don’t have the same obvious connections with other companies as Apple does. However, they could approach this from another angle, as they have with other issues.
Threats.
The obvious threat for Apple Music, which is the same for any other streaming service, is the competitors. Spotify is currently first when it comes to popularity, and it’s very difficult to change this as once people are used to Spotify, the original service, its difficult to change their minds. This will be the same for Amazon, its not going to be easy to get customers to choose another service once their loyal and comfortable with Spotify.
Another threat for Apple Music is that other companies that have the same advantages as them may come into the market. For example Facebook is known for expanding into different areas, and back in 2015 there was discussion of them offering a music service (Cooke, 2015). Therefore, this is a serious threat. Facebook has the same advantages as Apple Music such as being able to make the service easily accessible. As much as everybody uses their Apple phones every day, people also use Facebook everyday. So this is something Apple needs to watch out for, as well as Amazon Music Unlimited.
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